Power Rangers: Global Thunder
by cappucinokitten22
Summary: Twenty-five-thousand years ago, six magi imprisoned a dark sorceress and her minions. Now, that she's out, the world is in danger and the descendants of those six magi must now unite in order to defeat her. A/U
1. Chapter 1

Power Rangers: Global Thunder

A Fanfiction By cappuccinokitten22

Disclaimer: I Do Not Own the Power Rangers.

A/N

This is my first time writing a fiction for this fandom, please take that into consideration when reviewing, first of all. Second, this is my take on what I think the Power Rangers could be if it was taken to a much darker, more adult sort of place and I hope you enjoy it.  
Thank you. Please R&R :)

01

It was dark. The night air was biting and freezing. It felt as though it should have been winter, but it was actually the end of August. No light could be seen, not the even light offered by the moon or stars, which were barely even visible themselves. This was because of the sand storm that was taking place. The wind screamed as it moved a million grains of sand across the Sahara, creating a solid wall of black dust.

Exhausted and aching from the force of the sand constantly beating against every inch of his body, a five-foot long, black King Cobra burrowed into a nearby dune, hoping to gain some relief from the storm. He left only his eyes exposed just in case a morsel of food should happen by. None did.

Five hours later, the snake lay hungrily beneath the sand. Then as a final fork of lightning split across the sky, the storm came to an unexpected end. The screaming of the wind ceased and millions of grains of sand fell to the ground as the wall collapsed. Then there was a sound.

It was a slow, craggy, dragging sound that the snake had never heard before and, curiously, he raised his head up out of the sand to see what the source of the sound was. He watched, quietly dragging his forked tongue across his lips with a low _hiss_, as the earth before him split in two with a deafening _CRACK_, creating a miniscule canyon about a foot wide in , slowly, an ancient, cracked, crumbling and broken stone wall began to rise up out of the earth. When it was fully out of the canyon, the snake saw that it was covered in strange hieroglyphics the likes of which he had never seen before.

Then a hooded figure dressed in a thick, black cloak strode past the snake without even casting him a second glance. The snake hissed at the figure, revealing his fangs, but still they did not turn to face him. The snake narrowed his eyes angrily and watched silently as the figure reached out their hand, gripping what seemed to be a piece of black charcoal. They began to draw on the wall, tracing the hieroglyphics with which it was covered. In the very center of the wall, they drew an inverted pentagram. When they were finished, the wall began to glow with a pale white light. Soon the wall was engulfed in the light, which grew into a cylinder and shot into the sky.

As the light began to dissipate, the wall turned slowly sideways and it was then that the snake realized that what he had thought was a wall was not a wall at all. It was, in fact, a door. The snake watched silently as the door slowly swung open. Then he slithered forward and followed the cloaked figure through the doorway, but all that was on the other side was more sand.

Then the door closed behind him, and suddenly the desert was gone. They were now standing in wide, dark cave. Stalactites hung from the ceiling and the sound of water dripping could be heard from somewhere nearby. In the darkness of the cave, the snake could just barely make out the figure who stood in front of him now. He watched silently as the figure pulled something out of the pocket of the cloak. It appeared to be a white cigarette lighter. They lit the lighter silently with one hand, and then with the other, they reached out and held the flame in the palm of their hand. Then they threw the flame at the far wall of the cave. It shattered upon impact and the sparks fell to the ground only to reform as a roaring fire at the base of the wall.

The figure put the lighter back inside their pocket and approached the wall where the fire burned. When they got to it, they reached out and touched the wall with their hand, tracing a circle with their index finger. As they did so, the stone they traced began to move as they traced it and then a moment later, it vanished completely to reveal a large, circular chamber with a ceiling that seemed to have no end. Inside of the chamber, asleep on the stone floor, were three people – or rather one woman and two things. There was really no other word for them.

One of them appeared to be some sort of humanoid griffin with the lower body of a lion and the upper body of an eagle, but with the scarred, mangled face of a man who had faced a great battle. The other had skin that was colored a sickly shade of light green, four arms that ended in pincher-like hands, and a long, curving tail that ended in a nasty brown club. The woman on the other hand – she was tall and pale with long, curling brown hair that fell past her waist. She had a long, narrow nose and her features were sharp and angular. She wore a black, tattered ball gown with frayed lace sleeves and holes along the hemline.

Slowly, the figure stepped over the threshold of the circular room where the woman and monsters lay in slumber. As they did so, the snake hissed and slithered away into the darkest corner of the cave, searching for a way back to the desert.

Hala Nazari sat in her living room silently, watching as her mother, Amira, kindly shooed away the last of the uniformed moving men. Her father, Basir, sat on the couch beside her with his arm around her. As she sat there, it suddenly became apparent to her how very much she looked her parents. They all had brown skin the color of wet sand, brown eyes, brown hair the color of dark chocolate. Hala felt like the only thing that separated her from the rest of her family was the small, black mole just below her right eye, although she was certain someone in her family had one similar to it. Even her grandparents had looked just the same as her and her parents, from what she knew – she had only ever seen pictures of them, and those pictures now hung in perfect rows on the walls of their new home in Cedarwood Falls, California.

"Thank you so much for helping us," Amira said, pulling Hala out of her reverie. "The house, looks _so _beautiful."

Hala sighed quietly and pulled her black hair-tie off of her wrist and carefully pulled her long, dark hair up into half-up, half-down hairstyle. When she was finished, she looked up to see Basir frowning at her. She smiled apologetically and shrugged.

"It's no problem, ma'am," said a tall, smiling boy who appeared to be around Hala's age with messy blond hair and green eyes. "That's what we're paid for, and welcome to Cedarwood Falls."

"Thank you so much," Amira said again as the boy turned and left. She closed the door behind him. Then she turned slowly to face Hala, scowling. "You know I can hear you, right?"

"Well, I mean," Hala said, frowning. "Do you have to say the same thing to _all _the moving guys?"

"It's called being polite," Basir said, looking at her and pulling his arm away from her. "And it's something that you're not very good at."

"Dad," Hala said, turning to look at him. "This is the third time we've moved this year, and she's given the same speech to all the moving men every time."

"That's because I appreciate them helping us," Amira said, as she crossed the room and sat down in the off-white armchair in the corner of the room. "They help us with the moving more than you do."

"I busy helping put stuff away down here," Hala reminded her mother angrily, crossing her arms across her chest. "And besides, what girl wants to have to put her room back together again for the third time in a year - isn't that why you and Dad came here a little while ago to start doing it yourselves?"

Hala's parents were silent for a long moment as she sat and scowled at the blue and white oriental rug that covered the hardwood floors of her family's new living room. The rug was ancient and beautiful. It was an antique that Hala's mother had brought with her from Egypt when she moved to New York to get away from her parents and their stifling rules and traditions, although Hala knew it had been in her mother's family since before Amira had even been born.

Finally, Basir sighed and said, "I know that you never wanted to leave New York, but you have to understand that we had no choice -"

"I know, I know," Hala said, having already heard this speech a million times before. "The bills were piling up, Mom had a great job offer, and so we moved and everything turned out O, so well!" She looked from one parent to the other, smiling, her voice full of false sweetness.

"What happened in Chicago was not your mother's fault," Basir said, suddenly angry as Amira ran her hands through her hair, speaking quietly in Arabic as she often did when she was stressed.

"I know that, Dad," Hala said quickly, "but that doesn't change the fact that moving there ending up being a horrible idea."

"It was a less than ideal situation," Basir admitted, his voice faltering. "But it was no one's fault. Accidents happen."

Six months earlier, Hala's parents had uprooted her entire life and forced her to move to Chicago when her mother had gotten a job offer as an accountant for a very powerful law firm. Basir had barely been able to secure a steady teaching position at a local private school when Amira had suddenly been laid off from her accounting job a month later for accidentally misplacing some account founds. They had been forced to move three weeks later after it became horribly apparent that Basir's teaching job was not going to be enough to pay the bills.

"And Newcroft was ten times worse," Hala said, cupping her chin in her hand.

Amira sighed and pointed to the winding staircase on the other side of room. "Please, go to your room until you have something positive to say," she said in a tone that suggested that she was struggling not to lose her temper.

"What for?" Hala asked, looking up at her. "Did I say the wrong thing again?" She asked this, despite already knowing the answer.

"Just do it, please, Hala," Amira said simply.

Hala jumped to her feet and ran across the room and up the stairs, stomping her feet on her way up. She paused when she came to the first floor landing. It opened up into a narrow hallway with pale, yellow wallpaper, three doors, and several family portraits and school pictures hanging on the walls. Small piles of empty cardboard boxes littered the hall and were piled outside the doors on the hardwood floors, which had yet to be carpeted. She found it amazing that her parents had managed to accomplish as much as they had in just one day. The new house was almost completely unpacked and organized.

Hala walked down the hall to the second door on the right and paused in the open doorway. Two weeks ago, her parents had left her by herself at their old house in Newcroft, Mississippi for three and half days, so they could wallpaper and paint her room. Then today they had worked with the moving men to decorate it and put her to work, organizing the kitchen and living room. This was the first time she had seen her new room. The walls were lined with pink striped wallpaper and in the middle of the room stood a four poster canopy bed made of white-washed wood with beautiful, fluffy linens that matched the wallpaper. There were two doors in either corner of the room. A small vanity stand with a mirror and makeup stood outside the one nearest her. She crossed the room and pulled open the door, and gasped in disbelief when she saw what was inside:

An enormous walk-in closet with a built-in shoe rack and all of her clothes organized by shade and color. A long row of shelves and hooks had been embedded in the walls for her purses and belts, and two small dressers stood beside the doorway.

"This bedroom was a gift from your mother and I to apologize for everything that we've put you through this year."

Hala turned to see her father standing, leaning against the doorjamb. "How could you have possibly afforded all of this, though?" she asked in disbelief.

"Never mind how we paid for it," Basir said, smiling as he walked over to where she stood. "Just know that we love you, and you should apologize to your mother." He kissed her on the forehead, then he turned and walked away.

"Yes, Daddy," Hala said as she watched him walk away.

Once Basir was gone, Hala sank to the floor, feeling numb. She couldn't believe that her parents had done this for her, and she had been so rude to them. And not just earlier. Ever since she had found out that they were moving away from New York, she had been horrible and miserable to her parents. And as a present, they had given her a newly decorated room with a walk-in closet, new furniture, and presumably her own personal bathroom – there wasn't much else that could be behind that other door.

She was a horrible daughter.

A few minutes later, feeling sick to her stomach with guilt and disbelief, Hala pulled herself to feet and crossed the room to the beautiful, canopy princess bed she had been dreaming of since she was five. She threw herself on it and hugged a heart-shaped pillow to her chest silently. She pulled the pink comforter over her head and closed her eyes in a desperate effort to just forget.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I do not own the Power Rangers.

02

When Unabeth came to, she found herself in a large, square field fringed with tall, bare trees on all sides. The grass in the field was yellowing, dead, and would have come nearly to her waist had she been standing. Dandelions and a few withering wild flowers dotted the edges of the field near where the forest began, poking through piles of dead, multicolored leaves but it was apparent that the changing seasons had already begun to take their toll of their short lives. The sky was gray and dotted with charcoal clouds, and it was warm out, but the wind was sharp and biting. Autumn would be arriving soon.

However, none of this mattered to Unabeth for all that she could register, at the moment, was that she was no longer in the cave that she had been imprisoned in so long ago. She sat up silently, sweeping her long, curly hair out of her dark, violet eyes as she did so. She smiled when she saw that her servants, Huzgoss – a griffman – and Gacksum – a creature of her own creating known as kiraak – had already awakened and were kneeling before her silently. She got to her feet, lifting the hem of her gown, and said, smiling, her voice as shrill and sweet as the sound of jingle-bells, "Arise, my servants. Our imprisonment by those wretched magi has finally come to an end, and we are free at last from their curse."

"Mistress Unabeth," Huzgoss said as he and Gacksum rose slowly to their feet. "It is so good to hear your beautiful voice again after such a long time." He walked towards her on his two lion-like feet as he spoke. Then when he reached her, he reached out with one long, tawny, wing-like arm and took her hand in his, and brought it slowly to his lips. Then he looked up at her with enormous golden eyes and added, "However..." His voice trailed off hesitantly.

"However?" Unabeth said with raised eyebrows, jerking her hand away from him.

"It has occurred to us, mistress," Gacksum said, stepping forward and gesturing with his four arms, "that the magi who imprisoned us to begin with would never have released us from their curse themselves."

"Yes," Huzgoss said, nodding. "They feared us greatly, and your magical powers even more so."

"Yes, I realize this," Unabeth said, frowning at the two of them. "We were released by someone who is sided neither with the magi nor with myself."

Huzgoss quickly exchanged a glance with Gacksum and asked, "And do you have any idea who that someone may be?"

"Or what they might want?" Gacksum quickly added.

"No, of course not," Unabeth said as she turned away from the two of them and started towards a nearby silver birch tree. "However, should they ever choose to reveal themselves to me..." She got to the tree, and reached out to it's nearest branch. She grasped it in her hand and broke it off silently. As she did so, the branch was transformed into a long, thin, wand the tip of which came to an end in a tight, ornate coil. She turned back to her two monstrous servants. "...They shall be greatly rewarded."

"Yes, my mistress," Huzgoss said, nodding and swishing his lion tail as he spoke, "but if I may be so bold as to inquire – what are your plans for now?"

Unabeth looked at him, smiling. "My plans for now," she said. She then paused and pointed the coiled end of the wand at a nearby of dead leaves, which then burst into flames rather abruptly. "My plans for now are revenge, Huzgoss."

As Unabeth finished speaking, a flash of lightning lit up the ever-darkening sky and rain began to pour down on the three of them as they started to leave.

Hala lay in bed silently, her mind still groggy and full of thoughts about Newcroft. She opened her eyes and groaned as the canopy of her new bed came into focus. She had completely forgotten that her parents had gotten her a new bed. And a bedroom. Complete with walk-in closet, vanity, and bathroom.

"Hala."

Hala looked up silently to see her mother standing in the doorway of her room, dressed in a black pant-suit with her dark hair piled high on top her head in a messy bun. "Yeah, Mom?" she asked, her voice sounding somewhat muffled and throaty due to lack of usage.

"Your breakfast is ready," Amira told her as she turned and started to leave. "Come and eat before it gets cold."

Hala lay silently as she listened her mother's footsteps fade away down the hall. Then she sat up and checked the sparkly, pink wall-clock that hung on the wall just over the door that led to the hall. It was only seven-thirty. She climbed out of bed and crossed the room to the doorway where she paused. "Mom!" she called out to her mother, who she could hear going down the stairs now. "It's seven-thirty in the morning – I'm going back to bed!"

"Come eat or you're grounded!" Amira called back up to her.

Hala sighed and closed her door behind her quietly. "Alright, alright," she said as she walked down the hallway, carefully avoiding all the boxes that were still left over from the day before. She paused when she came to staircase.

At the very foot of the stairs was the front door of the house, which her parents had paid to have tiled with stained glass tiles of The Great Pyramid under the full moon and navy blue, star-dotted sky. If she remembered correctly, those were the same tiles her mother had picked out for their first house back in New York and her father had insisted on bringing them with them in the move. All of three of them. Through the stained glass, though, Hala could see the front path that led to the house and the yard, and coming up the path was a tall boy with messy blond hair and bright green eyes, carrying a plastic shopping bag. He was dressed in a red T-shirt with a black blazer and blue jeans.

Hala stared at him for a moment. There was vaguely familiar about him. Then, suddenly, it clicked as just as soon he stepped onto the porch. Hala ran down the stairs and threw the front door open just as the boy raised his hand to start knocking. "Aren't you the guy from the moving company?" she asked, stepping out onto the front porch and closing the door quickly behind her. Up close, she saw that he wore a tiny, red square stud earring in his right ear and he wore a thin, silver chain around his neck with a set of dog tags dangling from it.

The boy stared at her for a moment, uncertainly. Then he looked away from her, retreated down the front path a bit, and looked around the path and the yard silently, as though to checking to see if there was anyone else around that she could possibly be talking to. When he was certain that there wasn't, he looked at her, smiling, and said, "Yeah, hi, my name is Mason Matthews. I live down the street just there." He paused and pointed to a pale blue Victorian, two-story house at the end of street and looked back at her. "And, yeah, I work for the moving company. Nice to meet you." He offered Hala his hand to shake.

Hala stared at him as she followed him down the path, ignoring his offer to shake hands, silently for a moment in disbelief. Then she said, "You live down the street?"

"Uh, yeah," Mason said, his hand dropping back down to his side. "And my mom made cookies for you guys as a welcoming gift to the neighborhood." He held up the plastic shopping bag, which Hala now saw held a metal cookie tin similar to the ones people bought around Christmastime. "And we probably go to school together. I mean, how old are you?"

"Sixteen," Hala said simply, accepting the bag with the cookie tin in it. Her mother would have killed her if she refused to take it – bad manners.

"Yeah, me too," Mason said, laughing and nodding. "My name is Mason Matthews, and you are?"

Hala scowled at him. He was laughing at her. He was _actually _laughing at her, and for no reason. She wasn't sure why, but for some reason, this irritated her. "My name is Hala," she said, putting her hand on her hip. "And what,exactly, is so funny?"

"You are," Mason told her, laughing. "You just came running out here, dressed in your pajamas with your hair all messed up, acting like a total zombie. It's adorable."

Hala's face dropped as she felt her cheeks burn red, and she was suddenly glad for she had inherited her parents' exceptionally dark complexion. She stared at Mason, partially in disbelief, partially angry – was he honestly hitting on her? He didn't even know her.

"So do you ever plan on actually saying something?" Mason asked her, grinning after a long moment of silence.

"Yeah," Hala said, her scowl returning and her cheeks still flushed with blood. "Thanks for the cookies." She spun on her heel and made for the door to head back inside.

"Hey, wait a minute," Mason called after her, running after her and grabbing her by her arm.

Hala froze when she felt his hand on her arm, but only for a moment before she sighed and jerked away from him. She spun around to face him again. "What is it?" she demanded angrily.

Mason's smile faded. He frowned and said, his tone somewhat more serious, "School is starting next week –"

"It is?" Hala said, cutting him off, her anger suddenly evaporated. "I had no idea it started so soon around here. Do you know when the first day is?"

"Yeah, obviously," Mason said, scoffing. "It's the sixth, and I really _love_ how you're suddenly being nice now that you need to know something." He turned away from her and started down the path.

"Hey!" Hala said, following after him. "Hold on a second – you're the one, who turned up here at seven-thirty in the freaking morning to drop off cookies of all things, laughing like a moron for absolutely no reason and hitting on me –"

"Whoa,"Mason said, turning around to face her. "Now, you need to hold on – when in the world I was ever hitting on you?"

Hala paused and her face fell as it suddenly dawned on her that he was probably making fun of her rather than hitting on her, and if that were case then she had just made a complete and total idiot out of herself. "Y-you said I was adorable," she said, her voice faltering slightly as she felt herself blushing with embarrassment.

"No, I said _it_ was adorable," Mason corrected her. "As in your behavior, and it was adorable seeing you act like a stupefied four-year-old, meeting Santa Claus for the first time."

"Hala, is everything alright?"

They both turned to see Amira, standing on the porch, closing the door behind her with her car keys in hand.

"Oh, hi, Mom," Hala said, frowning at her. "Are you, um, going somewhere?" She pointed to the keys in her mother's hand.

"Yes, I'm going to work," Amira said as she walked down the path and crossed the lawn to the garage. "Your father is still inside, but your breakfast is cold by now because you let it sit for so long. Who is your friend?"

"Oh," Hala said, turning back to Mason, scowling. "This is Mason. He lives down the street. He's one of the movers who helped with the move yesterday."

"Oh, yes, I remember you," Amira said, smiling sweetly at Mason. "It's so nice to meet you formally, Mason. I look forward to having you as a neighbor."

"Thank you," Mason said, smiling back at her. "It was nice seeing you again, Mrs. Nazari."

Hala watched as her mom waved to them both before climbing into her red hybrid car, and driving away.

"She has a nice car," Mason said quietly.

"What?" Hala said, scowling at him.

"Your mom," Mason said. "She's got a nice car."

"So what?" Hala said angrily. "Are we suddenly playing nice now?"

"Look," Mason said, sighing. "I'm sorry about what I said, but you weren't exactly nice yourself."

Hala stared at him for a moment, her anger slowly beginning to dissipate. "Are you really apologizing?" she asked him, frowning. "I mean, you're not just playing games or pretending to apologize or something, are you?"

"What kind of person does something like that?" Mason asked her, his expression skeptical.

"A bad one," Hala said, looking away from him and scowling down at her bare feet. It was then she realized it was cold and she was standing in a pile of dead leaves, and she wasn't entirely sure if she would have looked stupider if she moved or stayed where she was.

"Anyway, though," Mason said, pulling Hala out of her reverie. "Yes, I'm really apologizing. Are we cool now?"

"I guess so," Hala said, shrugging. She frowned as a thought occurred to her and quickly added, "I'm really sorry, too. I'm just not much of a morning person, I guess." She smiled a little.

"I'll try to remember that the next time I stop over," Mason said, laughing. "By the way, I was going to ask you – do you want to carpool to school with me and my friend, Emmy?"

"Maybe," Hala said, frowning. "I was kinda planning on just taking the bus to school, and if I said yes, I'd want meet to this Emmy girl first, so I wouldn't end up trapped in a carpool with someone I hated, you know?"

"So, yes, and then come meet us tomorrow at The Coffee Pot for lunch, so you can meet her," Mason told her, smiling. "You and Emmy will get along great, I promise."

"How about this?" Hala said, laughing. "I'll meet you guys tomorrow after I download the directions from the net, and then if Emmy and I get along, I'll agree to carpool with you."

"Sounds good," Mason said, nodding. "I'll catch you tomorrow." He turned, and started off across her front yard in direction of his house.

Hala turned towards her front door, hugging the bag with the cookie tin in it to her chest tightly. Then she paused. There was a silver, spotted kitten sitting on her porch, bathing itself. "Aww," she said, bending down to pet it. "What a pretty kitty you are." But as she drew nearer to it, the cat meowed loudly and ran down the path before disappearing down the sidewalk.

Hala sighed and straightened up as she watched it disappear. "That's okay," she said, smiling somewhat sadly. "My parents would never have let me keep you anyway."

On the other side of Cedarwood Falls, in a white house with a tall tower stood hidden behind a six-foot tall wood fence. Inside the house, Calriel Gaspar stood silently inside his study. The walls of the room were beige and wood-panelled, and a tall bookshelf took up all entire back wall beside the door. Calriel himself was standing behind his desk, which a held a thick, ancient book bound in black leather and a framed picture of a beautiful woman with long, auburn hair and sparkling blue eyes, with his back to the room facing the bay window that overlooked his front lawn. He was tall and strangely pale for someone living in California. He had a narrow nose, a square jaw that was covered in a constant stubble, long brown hair that was pulled back into a ponytail with a thin leather cord, and cold, calculating grey eyes.

As he stood, he reached out silently and closed the shades on the window, blocking the world from his view. Then he turned just as the door of his study was opened, and a small, twelve-year-old girl with long red hair poked her head inside the doorway, caring a thin wooden box with a padlock on it.

"You found them, Riclin?" Calriel said as the girl came into the room and set the box on his desk.

"Yes, Calriel," Riclin said, smiling. "Quite easily, actually. I still remember when you asked me to make them ten years ago, although I'm still not certain that the elders would approve."

Calriel frowned when he heard this. "I have done many things that the elders would not approve of were they still alive," he said, sitting down in his swivel chair at his desk. "But you know why I asked you to make these. The old ones were no longer adequate, the magic embedded in them long ago had begun to finally wear off. However..." He paused and grabbed the box Riclin had set on the desk and pulled it towards him. "These will more than suffice whoever happens to be destined own them."

"You really have no idea they're going to go to, Calriel?" Riclin asked, her smile fading.

"No," Calriel said, fidgeting with the lock on the box, "but I know they shall leave our presence soon, for you know that Unabeth has been awakened from her slumber, and only the descendents of the elders chosen by the spirits will be able to stop her before it is too late." He paused in his fidgeting and brought his hands together to his forehead. "Although, I do believe that whoever these belong may attend my school."

Riclin looked up at him, her hair falling in her face, frowning and said, "Why is that?"

"These things have a way of working themselves out," Calriel said, smiling as opened the top left-hand drawer of his desk. He reached inside and pulled out a tiny, silver key.


End file.
